Pisa and Peter

When you mention Pisa, one thing comes to mind for most people. Unless you're an humanities scholar or architectural student, it is probably not the vast cathedral of the Piazza dei Miracoli, the Place of Miracles, nor one of the largest baptistries in Italy right next to the cathedral. Your first thought when you saw Pisa was probably the cathedral's bell tower, made famous for its lean.

I'm on shakier ground when I mention Peter. Walk into any Christian church and mention his name and the reactions are bound to be diverse. When Peter is brought to my mind my first thoughts depend on what I've been doing. This is understandable, since there are so many sides to Peter presented in the Bible.

-There is the brave and Spirit filled Peter preaching in Acts 2 when about three thousand were saved.
-The Spirit led Peter who answered that Jesus was Messiah in Matthew 16:16. There Jesus told him that the Spirit had given Peter the correct answer, but almost immediately after that we have...
-The loving (and then rebuked) Peter who attempts to tell Jesus that Jesus shouldn't let Himself be killed.

Peter is a great character in the Bible. Sometimes people say that Peter opened his mouth mostly to change feet, but Peter is one of those people that I identify with so clearly. Add to that the fact that no matter what Peter did, even unto denying knowledge of Christ three times, Jesus loved him and was his friend and you can see grace in action.

I was recently reading through a section of the Gospels and came across an amazing fact about Peter. Now Peter has long been a favorite of pastors and teachers for demonstrating so many things. I'm sure that many Christians have their own favorite Peter story. Mine has always been his water walking. I know that this revalation is going to sound silly to most of you, but as I was reading that story recently I was drawn to Christ's central role in it.

How could I have missed it before? I can think of several reasons. First, perhaps, is the way the Bible breaks down into such neat little packages of stories. Grab your Bible and turn to Matthew, chapter 14 with me. I ask you to grab your Bible because I'm curious if yours has the same type of study notes mine does. It breaks the chapter into three stories.

Verses 1 - 12 tell the story of the beheading of John the Baptist.

Verses 14 - 21 tell the story of feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish.

Verses 22 - 33 tell the story of Jesus (and Peter) walking on water.

Did you notice I dropped verses? Verse 13 is obvious from my list above, but there are 36 verses in this chapter. The last three read almost as a footnote that Jesus and the disciples landed ashore and many people were healed. The other day, however, I was reading this chapter as a whole and it took on new meaning for me because all three stories, as great as they are seperately, are more powerful for different reasons when taken together.

First there's the beheading of John the Baptist. This story is sometimes told with verse 13 and sometimes without. But that verse is the first part to understanding the wonderful richness of this chapter.

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. Matt 14:13

Jesus was personally affected by John's death. John was a cousin of his and had baptized Jesus. Jesus wanted to mourn but the people wanted to hear Him, to be healed, to see Him. Jesus' response?

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. Matt 14:14

Then a new crisis arose. It was late and the crowd was hungry. The disciples were all for sending them home to eat but Jesus gave them a task.

Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." Matt 14:16

The disciples responded that all they had were five loaves and two fish. Jesus took them, blessed them, and they fed all and had some left over. Finally the time had come that Jesus could mourn. He sent the disciples off in a boat. He dismissed the crowds. Then He went into the mountain to pray.

If, as I usually do, I start the story there, then I am not considering Jesus' grief over John's death. Maybe His disappointment at a the disciples inability to trust God to feed the people. But Jesus spends considerable time in prayer and is renewed. So He comes down off the mountain and starts to walk across the sea. But tonight the sea is not a calm reflecting pool for the moon but a choppy, wave filled, wind whipped roller-coaster ride. The Bible tells us that between the time that Jesus put the disciples in the boat and the time He started to pray, a terrific storm must have come up. There the disciples are, in the middle of the sea in a violent storm when they see a figure through the waves, calmly striding across the sea toward their boat.

Like any logical human, they immediately assume it's a ghost. Jesus calms their fears and then Peter, brave Peter, simple Peter, loving Peter cries out, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." (Matt 14:28)

At this point I would usually focus on either why Peter did that or on the next two versus. Jesus bids Peter come and Peter steps out of the boat and starts toward Jesus. Then Peter notices the wind and lets that take his mind off Jesus and Peter starts to imitate his name and sink like a rock. Peter makes one of the shortest prayers on record "Lord, save me!", a prayer that still works today, I might add. Jesus immediately reached out his hand, crossing whatever distance there was between Peter and Himself instantaneously. Peter is saved and they both walk back to the boat.

Now comes the critical verse, verse 32. When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.

For however long it took to get through the water back to the boat, the wind and waves were still there, but Peter took no notice of them because he was walking beside Jesus. The trouble didn't go away, but with Jesus it took on a different meaning. No longer were the wind and waves something to be feared because Jesus was a steady rock to stand on. As amazing as it is that Peter had the faith to jump out of the boat and follow Jesus, it is more amazing that Jesus was able to meet Peter's needs after dealing with His own grief and that crowd of people.

What does this have to do with the leaning tower of Pisa? Well, it's something I just learned about the tower. It was built on ground that is solid enough to you and I, but the tower is much heavier than we are. The weight of the tower pressed the ground into the soil beneath it. Turns out that soil is really sand. Sand that mixes with water from the water table when it rains. And if you've ever walked along the beach you know how wet sand can slide away under your feet.

In Luke, Jesus spoke about two men building their houses, one on solid bed rock, the other on sand. During a flood, the house built on rock stayed firm, the one on sand was washed away. There is a project going on to try to stabilize the leaning tower of Pisa. They are removing sandy soil from underneath one side of the tower in order to get it to settle back into a less hazardous tilt. The scientists who are doing this acknowledge that it is a temporary situation. In order to really fix the problem, they'll have to put a stable base underneath the tower, though no one has come up with a way to do that yet.

Sometimes our lives are often like that tower. The weight of things in our life causes us to take our minds off Jesus temporarily so we can focus on something else and, when we do that, we begin to lose our firm foundation and sink like both Pisa and Peter.

The good news is that no matter where we are or what we are doing, Jesus will answer our prayer for help immediately with His support. He may not solve our problem immediately, just as He didn't calm the wind and waves when Peter started sinking, but He will support and guide us with a firm foundation for the rest of our lives.